The Wheelers’ generational story begins withJohn Hervey’s parents, who came from Nicholasville, Kentucky located in the central part of the state. John Leonidas was born to freedom’s first generation on July 8, 1869, only a few years after the Civil War. John Hervey’s paternal grandmother Pheobe Wheeler raised John Leonidas on her own; she and her parents Lucius and Winnie Wheeler had been former slaves in Jessamine County. During the Civil War, Camp Nelson—located a few miles from Nicholasville—became a Union-controlled military camp for newly recruited black soldiers. It soon became a safe haven for their families and other refugees who came to escape slavery.62 John Hervey’s
father had mixed ancestry, reportedly the result of an intimate relationship between his mother and her former slave owner. Although Wheeler never knew his paternal grandfather, a family narrative handed down to him explained that his grandfather was a white plantation owner with the surname Willis. The story also held that his grandfather ran a bank in Nicholasville, a point that parallels John Hervey’s later career as a banker. The Willis family actually owned John Hervey's relatives during slavery, but upon emancipation all of the slaves on the plantation selected the surname Wheeler; changing their names became the first act ex-slaves performed to declare their freedom.63
If the family story passed down to John Hervey is true, then his paternal grandfather was a white man named John A. Willis. Willis was originally from Green County, Kentucky
62Marion B. Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky: From Slavery to Segregation, 1760-1891, Vol. 1
(Kentucky Historical Society, 1992), 154-163.
63Obituary of John Hervey Wheeler, John Hervey Wheeler Vertical File, Robert W. Woodruff
Library of the Atlanta University Center, Atlanta, Georgia; A. B. Caldwell, ed., History of American Negroes and His Institutions, Georgia Edition (A. B. Caldwell Publishing Company, 1917), 229-231; John Hervey Wheeler interview by August Meier, 1960, Durham, NC, notes, box 139, August Meier Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 2; Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), chapter 6.
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and moved to Nicholasville with his father, W. T. Willis in 1844. Once in Nicholasville, John became a teacher in the Jessamine County schools and was later an assistant at Bethel Academy. The Willis family became prominent in Jessamine County and both men served in the Second Kentucky Regiment during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), where W. T. Willis died during the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847.64 John Willis left his teaching position to become the master commissioner for the Jessamine Circuit Court where he served for the next sixteen years. After the Civil War, Willis won election to the Jessamine County clerk’s post and served two terms. By 1870, Willis and his wife Margaret had a daughter named Lucy, and about $15, 300.00 in personal property and real estate. In 1871, Willis left the county clerk’s position and founded the First National Bank of Nicholasville. Between 1871 and 1881, he worked as the bank's cashier and then president until 1896.65
John Hervey’s mother, Margaret Hervey, was also born to freedom’s first generation on April 12, 1877, at the end of the Reconstruction period. Margaret came from a less ambiguous family situation. Her immediate family included seven children with ties to an extended family across the Mid-West in states such as Indiana and Ohio. According to John Hervey, his maternal grandparents John and Jennie Hervey—both slaves—may have become freed property owners before the Civil War. While no documented evidence is available to prove the latter claim, Wheeler believed it did explain why his maternal grandmother owned about 150 acres of land used to grow tobacco and corn at a time when most blacks lacked
64 Bennett H. Young, A History of Jessamine County, Kentucky From its Earliest Settlement to 1898 (Louisville,
KY: Courier-Journal Job Printing Co., 1898), 234-235.
65U. S. Census, 1860; U. S. Census 1870; Bennett H. Young, A History of Jessamine County, Kentucky From its
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such independence.66 John Leonidas and Margaret Hervey were born into the immediate postwar generation reared in certain hopes and expectations of freedom during an adjustment period when blacks asserted their claims to full citizenship for the first time.
The Civil War emancipated black Americans in 1865, at which point they continued to articulate and define their own aspirations and expectations for freedom as American citizens. The postwar hopes that former slaves in Kentucky, as elsewhere, had for themselves and their children centered on education, land ownership, political rights, and control over their own labor. Their eagerness to obtain basic education was something they expressed before and during the war.67 African Americans living in Kentucky felt so strongly about their educational rights that they organized collectively, taking it upon themselves to establish their own private schools to compliment the limited resources from the state legislature between 1865 and 1874.68 The Kentucky freedmen also obtained assistance from the newly created Freedmen’s Bureau along with white religious and benevolent associations so they could achieve educations for their children.69 Black Kentuckians sacrificed tremendously in the spirit of uplift, self-help, and self-reliance, to provide the necessary financial support to their schools. Aside from their counterparts in
66“Biographical Sketch of Margaret Hervey Wheeler,” 1962 Personal Correspondence Folder #2, Wheeler
Papers.; Obituary of Margaret Hervey Wheeler, January 2, 1976, William Jesse Kennedy, Jr. Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; “St. Joseph’s Honors Mrs. Wheeler as Its ‘Mother of the Year,’ ” Carolina Times, May 19, 1962; John Hervey Wheeler, Interview by August Meier.
67Victor B. Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 1862-1884 (Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1983), 162; Marion B. Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky: From Slavery to Segregation, 1760-1891, Vol. 1 (Kentucky Historical Society, 1992), 229.
68Victory B. Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky, 167; James C. Klotter and Freda C. Klotter, A Concise
History of Kentucky (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008), 120.
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Louisiana, black Kentuckians gave more to support education than did other blacks anywhere in the ex-Confederate states.70
Despite their best efforts, black Kentuckians had limited success because of harsh resistance from whites. Political opposition, in particular, aimed at black education in Kentucky served as an obstacle in the years directly following emancipation. It was not until February 23, 1874, that the Kentucky state legislature finally passed a measure to establish a public school system for blacks. Nevertheless, the new law unfairly taxed black Kentuckians and the state spent less money on black education; it also called for segregated black and white schools. Moreover, the law essentially withheld control over black education from African American leaders, leaving white administrators in charge of determining the direction that black education would take in the state.71
The fate that awaited John Leonidas served as an obvious contrast to that of his wealthy white father, and the youngster would have otherwise benefited from that privilege had race been removed as a determining factor. Despite the challenges of not having his father around, John Leonidas nevertheless had the opportunity to attend public school in Kentucky. His former slave mother was more than likely illiterate herself, yet the fact that she “put [her son] to school at Nicholasville when he was of school age,” demonstrates her own ambition to see that her son received a quality education, and perhaps a better life than what she and her parents knew. John Leonidas did not disappoint as he showed considerable promise, “prov[ing] to be an apt student” early on. “Such was his progress” as a student that
70
Ibid., 234.
71 Victory B. Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky, 170; Marion B. Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky,
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“even from the public school he was able to take up the work of teaching,” which probably helped nurture in him a sense of responsibility to community.72
The public school system for freed people in Kentucky ensured that black children received instruction primarily from African American teachers. The black schoolteachers had to pass examinations—for certification purposes—to test their math, reading, spelling, and writing skills.73 When John Leonidas began teaching in Kentucky’s public schools in the late 1880s, most black teachers held first-, second-, and third-class teaching certificates. Because of his young age, John Leonidas was probably among the only thirteen percent of black school teachers in Kentucky that had no teaching experience at all prior to being hired.74 The monthly salaries for Kentucky’s black teachers during the 1880s ranged from thirty-seven to forty-seven dollars; those who taught at the high school level or in urban areas made more.75 John Leonidas’ thirst for education did not end once he finished public school in Kentucky; teaching helped put him closer to reaching his own aspirations and expectations for freedom. Through determination and the financial sacrifices John Leonidas made while teaching, he saved up enough money to move to Ohio in 1889 with plans to attend Wilberforce University, which he did in 1890.76
72A. B. Caldwell, ed., History of American Negroes and His Institutions, Georgia Edition (A. B. Caldwell
Publishing Company, 1917), 229-231.
73Marion B. Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky, 255. 74
Ibid., 257.
75Marion B. Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky, 258. 76
A. B. Caldwell, ed., History of American Negroes and His Institutions, Georgia Edition, 229,
231; M. S. Stuart, AnEconomic Detour: A History of Insurance in the Lives of American Negroes (New York : W. Malliet and Co., 1940).
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According to her brief biographical sketch, Margaret Hervey attended Ariel Normal School, founded by white abolitionist John G. Fee—one of the foremost advocates of black education in Kentucky.77 In 1864, under the auspices of the American Missionary Association, John Fee set-up a church and school for black Union soldiers and their families at Camp Nelson. Afterwards, Fee went on to organize black educational groups in other areas nearby.78 Most notably, he re-opened Berea College as an integrated institution after the war. Fee’s Camp Nelson School briefly operated during the war with limited government
assistance, but it eventually disbanded. Fee's son Howard along with Gabriel Burdett and Abisha Scofield reopened the Camp Nelson School, with funds from the Freedman’s Bureau and changed its name to Ariel Academy. It operated in earnest until the state established its own public schools for blacks.79 Between 1875 and 1882, Gabriel Burdett’s daughter ran a public school at Camp Nelson and then reopened Ariel Normal School, running it until 1900.80 Attending Ariel Normal meant something special to Margaret Hervey; even in her old age, it was important to her that people knew she went to a school founded on the principles of racial equality and integration.
As the direct beneficiaries of black Kentuckians’ persistent quest for increased educational opportunities, John Leonidas and Margaret Hervey had every reason to be optimistic and hopeful about their futures. As the “future of the race,” they joined a rising
77“Biographical Sketch of Margaret Hervey Wheeler,” John Hervey Wheeler, 1962 Personal Correspondence
Folder #2, Wheeler Papers, 1; “St. Joseph’s Honors Mrs. Wheeler as Its ‘Mother of the Year,’ ” Carolina Times, May 19, 1962;Victory B. Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky, 161.
78John G. Fee, Autobiography of John G. Fee, 175-183; Victory B. Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky, 161. 79
Marion B. Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky, 231, 250.
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postwar generation destined to “be helped to places of usefulness and respectability.” They took advantage of additional opportunities and continued their educational pursuits at Wilberforce University in Xenia, Ohio in the last decade of the nineteenth century. In college, John Leonidas demonstrated a strong work ethic, which proved important to racial uplift. While at Wilberforce, he paid his way through school by working in hotels and as a cook during the summers. In addition to laboring hard to earn enough to pay for his college tuition, John Leonidas worked equally as hard in the classroom. In the year after he enrolled at Wilberforce University, he received a scholarship, which “was of great assistance to him” in meeting his college expenses and academic expectations.81